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Monday, February 15, 2016

Event Recap: Victoria Aveyard and Sophie Jordan's St. Louis Signing

As I have
mentioned a hundred times since I heard about it some number of weeks ago, I
went to the Victoria Aveyard and Sophie Jordan book signing event in St. Louis
last week. I met Sophie Jordan and Victoria Aveyard! EEEEKKKK!!!

Okay, now that
that’s out of the way, let’s discuss how things went down.

First of all, I
drove myself to this event. I know. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “Big
deal. She’s twenty-some-odd-years-young. She can drive herself.” And yes, you
would be right. However, I drove 3.5 hours to St. Louis and 3.5 hours home when
I was done getting my books signed at 8:20 p.m. In case you’re like me and math
isn’t your strong suit, that’s SEVEN HOURS of driving. As I’m looking back at
my lack of pictures, I think I can tell I was tired and slightly less ecstatic
than I should have been. Oh well…

Anywho, I got to the
signing early because this was my first time driving in St. Louis and I wanted
to avoid the rush-hour traffic. I failed to check the weather for St. Louis
beforehand though, so when it started snowing, I was very unprepared.
Thankfully it was only flurries and nothing was really sticking. Oh, and Sophie
Jordan, who is from Texas, was very excited about the snow. Victoria lives on
the east coast and wasn’t too terribly worried about the minor flurries.

Now that my whole
spiel about driving and the snow is over with, Imma actually talk about what went
down at the signing. The owner (I believe) of the independent bookstore that
was hosting the event with the library held a Q&A with the authors. I’ve
separated the questions and answers (as much as I remember of them anyway)
below. Also note that these answers and questions have been summarized because
I was taking notes on my phone. It’s not all word-for-word.

Q: How do you keep yourself on track when writing?

A (Sophie): It’s
like being married to my husband. I can’t pick up and leave because a new hot
guy comes around. It’s just like a new book idea. I have to dedicate myself to
just one.

A (Victoria): I
put my back against the wall after taking out college loans and needing to pay
them off, so I decided to write a book.

Q: How/when did you start writing?

A (Aveyard): I
played Legend of Zelda with my
brother when I was younger and I was fascinated by the maps in the how-to
manuals, so I’d make my own fantasy maps with terrible stories to go along with
them. They were written in crayon. I was probably six or seven.

A (Sophie): I
wrote fanfiction before it was really called fanfiction, like 90210 or Sweet Valley High fanfiction.

Q: Do you guys know the endings of your books before
you write or does it just come to you?

A (Victoria):
While I don’t know exactly how Mare’s story ends, I do know the last line and I
knew I wasn’t going to reach that line with only three books in the series, so
Harper agreed to expand the series to four books. They even asked if I could do
five.

A (Sophie): I didn’t
even know who Jacinda was going to end up with in the Firelight trilogy.

Q: Do you prefer writing romance or action?

A (Sophie): I prefer relationships, if the relationship isn’t there, I can’t write
the action. I do like action though.

A (Victoria):
Fights before romance. It’s hard to write a kiss.

Q: Is it difficult to write in certain POVs?

A (Sophie): Two
POVs is difficult to write. My friend read Reign
of Shadows and she said both characters sounded the same, so I had to
change some things.

A (Victoria): We
may get another POV in the third book. (Gasps in the audience.) I understood
Mare’s voice, but it was hard to write as if Mare didn’t know what was going on
in other characters’ heads when I actually did know.

Q: Why do you write fantasy?

A (Victoria): I
like historical fiction, but writing it involves too much research, so I can
create my own huge world instead.

A (Sophie): I love
medieval stories.

Q: What books have you read that you’d recommend?

A (Victoria): Passenger by Alexandra Bracken, A Court of Thrones and Roses by Sarah J.
Maas, The Wrath and the Dawn sequel

A (Sophie): I want
to read JLA’s The Problem with Forever,
but I love all of Katie McGarry’s books.

Q: What are you guys doing/writing next?

A (Victoria): I’ve
got the screenplay itch.

A (Sophie): Not
the YA thriller I’ve had on the backburner. I’ve been thinking about a two-book
YA companion series. (Contemporary?)

Question from the audience:

Q: Any news about your movie?

A (Victoria):
Elizabeth Banks, the director signed on for it, is awesome. She knows the YA
world and fans because of The Hunger
Games.

A (Sophie): Firelight is set to get its own film, and an actress, who I can’t name, has signed on.

***

There were a few
other questions I didn’t write down, but I think this info is pretty
satisfactory. Especially the news that there’s going to be another POV in book
three!

After the Q&A,
I lined up for the signing. I was in Group 1 because I’d gotten there so early,
so I managed to be eighth or so in line. When I got up to Victoria, I made a
joke about getting to her before her hand cramped up and she said that this was
nothing, she’d signed 25,000 copies of Glass
Sword.

I then took a
picture with both authors (it’s a little blurry, but I’m going to try to clean
it up with Photoshop).

When I slid my
books over to Sophie, things got a little backed up because I’d brought all six
of her YA books to get signed. And Sophie doodled in Reign of Shadows and put taglines in different colored ink on each
book. So awesome! Victoria even made a joke that it took Sophie forever because
she wrote a whole sentence when signing a book.

Oh, and before I
forget, I met a fellow booklover at the event. Her name’s Carole and she has a
blog. You should check it out.
We talked about future St. Louis signings and she even gave me some Edelweiss
pointers. Thanks, Carole!

All in all, it was
a fun event. Both authors were pretty funny and I’m glad I get to add them to
the ever-growing list of authors I’ve met. I just wish I didn’t have to drive
so far to meet them all. *sigh*

Of course, that doesn't mean I'll stop going. Especially since there's another signing in March. ;)

2 comments:

I love this. Thank you for the shout out! I am so sorry that the pic I took is blurry. I promise I tried. You did awesome with all of your notes and details for this post. Thanks for talking to me at this event! Hopefully, we can find each other in March!